Author: Kate Davies

We are five weeks in to the Knitting Season Club – a three month exploration of creative making (and handknit design), following a format that’s a little different to previous clubs, with weekly essays and creative assignments as well as the usual collection of new patterns. These essays have been one of the most enjoyable… Read More

I find it fascinating how a different set of colours can change the feel of a garment. Here’s the Weel Riggit pullover, in four very different shades of our lovely new Àrd Thìr yarn . . Camusdarach (grey); Firemore (mauve-ish); Kintra (dusky pink) and Husinis (khaki-ish). This palette creates a softly muted gradient – very… Read More

Like many people, I think, this style of warm, hard-wearing and definitively wintery sweater fills me with a very particular kind of nostalgia. I first saw sweaters of this kind when I was eighteen, and went away to University. There I encountered a very particular kind of student who wore this type of sweater –… Read More

It’s yarn launch day! Let me introduce Àrd Thìr: our new aran (heavy worsted) weight yarn in a range of beautiful shades that have been inspired by the Scottish winter landscape. Our winter landscape is often thought to be drained of colour, but if you look carefully, you’ll discover a mix of many interesting shades:… Read More

Hello, everyone Things have been a bit quiet around here – largely because I’m busy working on the Knitting Season club. As well as the designs, the club involves a 12-week essay series (a course, if you like) exploring a range of different approaches to creative practice. These essays are polemical, and are meant to… Read More

Journals can be many things to many people. Dot-grid journals seem perhaps to be used most frequently as a sort of personal planner: setting health goals, tracking habits, creating useful calendars, checking off items on a to-do list. These are all fantastic ways to use a dot-grid journal – and there are lots of resources… Read More

From the outside looking in, I imagine many people would describe me as a highly disorganised person. My desk is always very messy. I don’t make lists. I don’t have a diary. I don’t use any sort of formal system for organising my time or my activities. I dislike categorising and hate filing. When I… Read More

As we approach the start of Knitting Season, I thought I’d write a few posts about how I use (and have used) journals. I imagine many of us think about journals as deeply personal spaces, and yet my most formative experience of journal keeping was collective and not individual. (Because this story belongs to others… Read More

I seem to have published a lot of designs in 2018, including thirteen different sweaters. This fairly large number is due to the fact that, in the past year or so, I’ve found my energy for my design work has been massively renewed by different shapes. I’ve created easy throw-over garments with grown-on sleeves and… Read More

When I look back on this year, one of the most interesting things for me personally has been the number of small changes that have occurred in recent months. When one considers such changes individually they don’t seem like much – but when I think of them collectively, their impact on me has really been… Read More

We’ve had a lot going on in 2018! We began the year with West Highland Way. (Myrtle) I created twelve designs for this book, and I also enjoyed the writing I produced for it. Together amounting to the same length as a novella, the West Highland Way essays cover a series of topics that you… Read More

Yes, this is a post in which I reiterate a frequently made point: that while gauge is really important when you are knitting a pattern, needle size is completely immaterial. When you want a hand-knitted item to fit correctly, the only thing that matters is that the fabric you are knitting is as similar as… Read More